Dr. Desmond Ford a Preterist?

[Kevin H]

22 hours ago, Reddogs said:

Desmond Ford has been brought down by his own words, no one twisted them, and they are out there for all to see.. and what great light did it bring to the church, that is the real question....

Well Duh-ha......

Sorry for being so sarcastic but you appear to either not have read my post or looked at the words but did not comprehend what I was trying to say.

I agree that Desmond Ford has been brought down by his own words and they are out there for all to see and that he did not bring any great light into the church.

But yes, that article does twist his words. We could say about someone "They smell because they do not brush their teeth and have bad dental and bad breath" and these could be the facts about a person. But someone can take part of the fact, that this person smells but goes down a different path saying that the smell is caused by body odor because they never take a bath, while the person could well be taking a bath several times a day and just neglecting his oral care.

In truth Desmond Ford was an outstanding scholar in "Reformation" theology and a fairly good scholar in the old understanding of the New Testament and only had a layman acquaintance of the Old Testament, no scholarly understanding of it. He tried to import Luther's views onto the rest of the Bible.

Now New Testament understanding has changed in the past few decades and Ford's views even though they were appropriate for his time, have now been seen as obsolete. Thus Ford only has a layman's knowledge of the Old Testament and out of date knowledge of the New Testament, but still quite a scholar on reformation theology. But Ford does not take a stand on preterism,  historisism or futurism.  He too much tries to say that they all have a point and tries to make the text apply to all 3 schools.

Ok, so tell me Reddogs from what I wrote above, where does it sound like I'm a Ford fan? Where does it sound like he brought some great light into the church? But these criticisms comes from letting his words stand on their own and just stating the facts. This is being critical of his views but being fair to his views and dealing with the issues. This is honest concern and criticism.

What this author has done is not taken fair and honest criticism, but has been lazy and unfair. He takes PART of what Ford has to say and jumbles them up into a concoction. While we both have equal distain for his work, the way the author has done it is unfair and thus cruel: His thesis is "Look here, you can find some words that Desmond Ford says that sounds like he is siding with the preterits, since many atheists are preterits, that means that Ford is an atheist."

Point # 1 wrong with this is that not all preterits are atheists, so even if Ford was a 100% bonified preterits that would not automatically make him an atheist.

Point # 2 wrong with this is that someone could just as easily twist Ford's words and make him look like a futurist and classify him with people who we may disagree with over eschatology but who we would still see as good Christians. And likewise someone could just as easily twist Ford's words to make him look like a good old faithful Seventh-day Adventist and praise him for being one of us. However any one of these would be wrong.

Desmond Ford's words gives him enough rope to hang himself. There are enough honest ways to be critical of his work. We do not have to stoop to dishonest ways as the author of this piece does. I'm not asking you not to be critical of him. As you see I am very critical of him. I am only asking that we be fair and honest in our criticism.

And I have to confess that while I don't have proof and I apologize if I'm jumping to conclusions, I suspect that the author tends to support heresies at the other extreme. Ford's view and some of our "conservative" views tend to be two sides of the same coin. Both have approximately half the truth that they use against the rest of the truth. In unjustly villianizing Dr. Ford it is a way to make it look like Ford is totally wrong and the author's side is totally right while it is likely that Ford is in one ditch and the author is in the other.